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Afterthought – My Assassin’s Creed Series Editorial and the status of modern gaminghttps://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/afterthought-my-assassins-creed-series-editorial-and-the-status-of-modern-gaming/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/afterthought-my-assassins-creed-series-editorial-and-the-status-of-modern-gaming/#respondFri, 02 Sep 2016 13:52:12 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1274Continue reading →]]>So after I spent the last few months putting together the editorial series (if you can call it that) on Assassin’s Creed, I figured I may do another piece about the series in general, my thoughts on it and how it actually is important we talk about it.

A friend of mine is a consolero – he only plays games on console. I have no such affiliation, I play games on whatever system that supports it. I own consoles from all manufacturers, a PC, a tablet, you name it. But there is a general lack of thought that system fanboys of any system have.

When Assassin’s Creed Unity came out on PC I complained that the game is poorly optimized even after a few patches to which my friend replied laughingly that the PS4 version runs fine and that it is my own fault for getting the PC version. But is it, though? Is it really MY fault that big companies don’t give a fuck about consumers to the point where they charge 70 bucks for a broken mess they KNOW is broken. I think not. I think the entire idea that “it’s fine on system X, fuck everyone else but me” is a good way of thinking is stupid at best and, as much as I hate that word, toxic at worst. My friend figured he could rub one on by showing me how superior his PS4 was compared to my PC (a PC that has 3 year old components and STILL blows everything out of the water any console could offer, but I digress) and that if I would just be much better of if I follow every whim of the industry to get the best experiences instead of, you know, the industry actually making sure we get the best experience no matter what.

This sort of corporate think runs deep with my generation – I am in my early 30s – and those younger than I am. The belief that the big corporation knows best and that we all just have to obey to have a good time is not only absurd, it is scary.

Nintendo is about to unveil the NX and from what I know it will follow the traditional Nintendo model: Underpowered, gimmicky and pointless. But people will buy it because the media tells them it is actually great to pay a lot of money for a shitty product. Now, I don’t think the product will actually be bad. But Nintendo’s practices surely are bad. The system will most probably not be backwards compatible with anything, meaning you will have to re-buy all your Virtual Console games AGAIN. Now, maybe Nintendo will actually fix this issue this time but if time has taught us something, it is that Nintendo will be Nintendo. And I am not a fan of this practice.

As for Assassin’s Creed, the series has always been know to be incomplete. Assassin’s Creed 3 for example has a rather bad reputation, citing the bad protagonist and boring gameplay. But is it really this simple? Connor, for example, is not a bad character at all. He is one of the best written, three dimensional characters in the series, really. The problem people have with him is that he is not a power fantasy character and that he is not the proagonist in his own story. America is. Connor just stumbles from one historic event into the next and that makes people dislike him since they don’t feel he has control over his own life. But that is in fact the whole point of his entire story. And by the end of the story he indeed does gain control and takes matters into his own hands. The game works well with that. If anything, his story missions are rather dull which makes people associate him with being dull and his game being boring. But it really is a great game. It is just very bad with explaining its mechanics. The game offers a manual hidden in the menus that explains a lot of things, but you will probably never read it. The battle system, while being incredibly simple makes you feel like a bad ass and hunting and traversing the frontier is just great fun, once the gameplay mechanics click.

Assassins Creed Unity on the other hand overexplains and oversimplifys things to the point that it actualy does become boring. The new navigation and battle system is pretty much exactly like it was before jsut simplified to the point that it feels more complex when in reality it is not. Arno is the most boring and dull character ever up to the point when my friend who compleed the game 100% simply can’t remember ANY remarkable thing he did whatsoever. As I have said earlier, the devlopers wanted to copy Ezios games without understanding WHY those were so good to begin with.

With an Ezio Collection for PS4/Xbox One on the horizon, the circle is now complete, really. After the franchise being milked to death they now milk individual characters. So expect the next AC game to be the start of a trilogy where everyone and everything will be milked to death.

Console fanboys will eat it up, however, that their system of choice will or won’t have exclusive bonusses that are not really exclusive at all and PC Master Race idiots will eat it up that they can get so much more graphical fidelity out of their 30fps game than the console peasants. And above all sits a multi billion dollar corporation that laughs at all of us.

Does that mean we should stop playing the series? Of course not. It is a good series and even the bad entries are quite enjoyable. But we should stop thinking along company lines and more along the lines of what is eventualyl good for the consumer. Gaming has become worse and worse every single year. And if we don’t wake up, it will get even worse. Don’t let it get worse.

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/09/02/afterthought-my-assassins-creed-series-editorial-and-the-status-of-modern-gaming/feed/0ezekielrageThat time I got Ubisofted at Gamescom 2016https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/that-time-i-got-ubisofted-at-gamescom-2016/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/that-time-i-got-ubisofted-at-gamescom-2016/#respondMon, 22 Aug 2016 08:19:37 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1290Continue reading →]]>I was at Gamescom 2016 and had the privilege of playing some private sessions of both FOR HONOR and STAR TREK BRIDGE CREW, two upcoming Ubisoft titles. And let me tell you, It did NOT go as expected!

Let me start by saying that I am NOT on the VR bandwagon. I see a lot of potential in the technology but so far it does not strike me as mass market tech. I think it will take quite a few more years for VR to hit it big and my latest experience did not change that line of thinking at all.

I was invited into the Ubisoft Lounge at Gamescom 2016 to play some Star Trek Bridge Crew, a full VR experience. The setup was exactly what I expected, rigid chairs you were not allowed to move an inch, cameras, headsets, VR helmets and sensors everywhere. The pricetag alone on those devices would send me into shock as a customer.

We were there as a team of three, all of them strangers to me, and we got some short instructions before we put on the VR headset. Let me tell you, it works amazingly perfect, and it better had, considering all the sensors and cameras everywhere. The full VR experience worked as advertised and I am very happy to say that my personal playsession ran at a very smooth framerate, not a single hiccup and no headaches or nausea for me. It was very pleasant to play.

Our mission consisted of finding parts of a vessel, scanning it, beaming any humans on board and fend off some Klingons. I took the role of navigator, the job Sulu has. I was in charge of maneuvering the Enterprise through some debris, warp us to the location, position it at all times so that the other people could do their jobs and then warp us back before the Klingons took us down (with only 19% on shields left to spare, I might add)

At no point did I make a decision myself, it was all listening to the captain, who was a Ubisoft rep, and working. It was fun and entertaining, but I could see it get stale very quickly as you are, well, working and not playing. It is fun for a while but I imagine that after six or seven missions of just doing your job you might feel the need to change things up. Now, of course that is not a problem in the full game since I assume you can just switch position and be engineer for a while or captain.

What was interesting to see was how incredibly low the resolution was. The visuals were nothing to write home about to begin with but the resolution was so low, it almost felt like it was sub 480p. Perhaps I am wrong about it but it just goes to show that VR simply is not there yet. I am one that prefers smooth framerates over glossy visuals any day but if you have to scale back graphics so much in order to get a stable framerate, the problem is clear.

That being said it was a great experience and I truly believe that in a few years, when tech has advanced, VR will become a big player in many fields. Just not today.

After my Star Trek session one of the devs of FOR HONOR invited me to try out the game. My Star Trek team and I just went in and did battle against four other people – all strangers to us. We were given instructions on how to play and had some time to get used to the controls via a well designed tutorial. And then we jumped right into the game, which was a 4 VS4 online match of capture the fort – three locations to capture and enemies to kill. We had to get to 1000 points first and once we were there the mission was to exterminate the enemies who, at this point, had no more respawns active.

All this time watching Hell’s Kitchen really paid off during this match, as it was clear to me that there is NO victory without communication. I had to constantly remind everyone to keep talking and once we got into that rhythm, we not only had a great time, we also won the match with a ton of score to spare. I was quite surprised since I usually don’t like online gaming but this was something, really.

The build we played looked pretty final to me. I experienced no bugs or major problems, there was no stuttering, no framerate problems and no problem with the controls which are quite complex to master but feel incredibly great. Every action had weight and heavyness to it and the overall experience was amazing.

If I had to sum up my session with the game I’d say it truly lived up to my expectations. I was glad I gave the game a fair chance as it really looks like Ubisoft learned their lesson. Nothing I saw and played was buggy or felt rushed and after talking with a developer for a little I really felt like they got the time they needed to finish the game up, which was nice.

All in all I had a great time at Ubisoft and I will buy FOR HONOR for sure. Star Trek VR, while being an amazing experience seems to be quite expensive with all the tech you need to play it and my disposable income is low. That being said, it did feel truly amazing and immersive and if you are a fan of VR and/or Star Trek let me tell you: You will NOT be disappointed

Bearded me holding the For Honor poster and my winning team with our instructor

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/08/22/that-time-i-got-ubisofted-at-gamescom-2016/feed/0ezekielrage14067859_1165628583498839_5664994424729636833_oAssassin’s Creed – The Desmond Collection, Part 5https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-5/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-5/#respondTue, 07 Jun 2016 22:38:42 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1220Continue reading →]]>Assassin’s Creed is a videogame series by publisher Ubisoft. The player takes the role of various assassins all throughout history and explores historical settings, meets real people from those locations and kills most of them. It is a very enjoyable series.

This is the final part of a multi part series I’ll do on the technical and designphilosophical parts of the first five games. This is the final part, where I’ll be talking about the rest of the series in broad strokes, as it is not needed to retreat already explored topics. Click here to read Part 4.

In 2013, 2014 and 2015 Ubisoft released at least two Assassin’s Creed games. Most of them were ports and remasters and we already covered all of that in the previous parts. Now it’s time to look at the last three mainline games.

AC4 Black Flag was released in 2013 to critical and commercial success. The reason for that is simple: it is a pirate game and a good one as well. It was of course plagued with the usual AC problems but at least it was not that buggy, despite being unfinished. The Assassin missions were awful, though, but since people came for a pirate game and got a pirate game, most people didn’t care.

In 2014 Ubisoft released the game that broke the camel’s back, so to speak. AC Unity was so incredibly bad, it cured most people of Assassin’s Creed fever. Using a new engine, Ubisoft again released an unfinished game, with many game breaking bugs and glitches. It was nearly unplayable and needed 5 patches before it was finished. The problem is, the finshed game isn’t very good either.

Then Ubisoft released AC Syndicate in 2015 and that game, while well recieved critically, didn’t sell as well as Ubisoft hoped, because people were finally fed up with all the bullshit Ubisoft pulled. Thus Ubisoft decided to put the series on a break and re-launch it in 2017 with completely new gameplay elements. As for Syndicate, it is a great game that feels completed and didn’t need many patches to work properly. It uses the same Engine as Unity and is graphically not as impressive but the result is a much better game.

Let’s talk about those three in more detail. I feel like AC4 was actually supposed to be another part in the America/Kenway saga, as it tells the story of Connors grandfather Edward. I suspect after the negative reaciton to AC3, Ubisoft again decided to make a DLC or spinoff into a full game. By simply adding more pirate stuff instead of Assassin stuff they had an easy way out. The game still feels rather incomplete, with large landmasses being visible in the game and on the map but since you are unable to explore those, they re just… there. It doesn’t help that the present segments are bad and feel forced, either. Sure, most people were happy to forget about all of that since it is a legitimately good pirate game but if you don’t care about the pirate stuff you’ll find the game lacking pretty much everywhere else. The missions in the game basically all are: Follow guy, don’t be detected or listen to people talk while following them. And if they detect you, you are dead. The entire mission structure is boring as hell. And pretty much all missions are overly long and boring. It is quite clear that they added so many tailing missions to make the game longer than it has any right to be.

Unity is a bad game in general, though. It is VERY obvious that they tried to replicate as much of Ezios games as possible without understanding why those games were so great to begin with. You have a central european city, wannabe womanizer and pseudo charismatic lead, coming of age story, a bit of love thrown in there and all the gameplay tropes from Ezio as well. They even brought back throwing bombs from AC Revelations. The problem is none of it worked at launch and once it did work it had no impact. Arno is a boring slob, he isn’t as suave as Ezio nor is he as likeable and entertaining. He’s just there like a bad copy. Paris is nice to look at but overcrowded, which makes traversal a bitch. The buildings aren’t fun to climb because the new climbing system is partly automated which means you can’t do some moves you previously could. Missions are boring, there is no way to travel faster with a horse for example and the loading times are immense. They even cut the white room segments. There are a ton of sidequests and the new co-op missions which are actually quite fun even in single player but online is forced on you everywhere so that ruins it again. Problem is, just as the Story sections, most of the sidequests are boring and even the great ones like the murder mysteries are crap because the game is so cluttered with NPCs that you can barely get from point A to point B without being frustrated. If ACRogue is a “best of Assassin’s Creed”, then ACUnity is a “worst of”, really. The devs were so obsessed with Ezio they literally brought parts of his music back, put Arno in the same civilian clothes and even did a whole thing about bringing people into the order. But the entire game is just shallow, the gameplay is boring and the only thing to say about Paris is that it may feel complete for a change but it is littered with collectibles you don’t care about. The sad part is that the game actually has a few great new additions that drown in a sea of mediocre, like the fact that stealth missions no longer fail you if you are detected. Instead, the mission will change to a chase mission or, if you lose sight of your target, a locate mission. But that alone can’t make this boring mess any better.

ACSyndicate, however, did almost everything right. The developers of this game understood what makes the series fun and they put a lot of that fun into the game. It plays great, looks great, works as it should and has a lot of content. The new friendship system is great, the two protagonists are exceptionally well written, especially Evie, who, by all accounts, is the real star of the game and the entire package just works. Now, the music quality is debatable, as the game is filled with period authentic violin music but lacks the big great soundtracks of games past. Also, while London is nicely done and quite large, the outer parts of the city are just inaccessable. It does feel as complete as Paris did, though, so that’s great. Also, you can now travel by train, horse carrriage and even steamboat. The white rooms are back and characters are well written and interesting. All the good new things from Unity are back and the bad ones have been fixed. The new battle system is great fun and well animated, traversal is made easy thanks to the grappling hook and the world is not littered with useless crap. Instead districts are filled with side missions you can do to liberate them and while Unity had a system like that as well, this time it’s actually fun. London is a bit more empty than Paris, which also makes traversal much more entertaining. All in all, this is the direction Unity should have taken.

Now, what do we do with our fictional remasters? Well, not much, really. AC4 is a solid game, all we need to do is port it to the new Engine from Unity and Syndicate, polish it up, change the map so that inaccessable parts are clearly marked as inaccessable and put in the new stealth system from the newer games, where you don’t automatically die if a guy detects you. Boom, better game. Drop the Number because clearly we will no longer need it and put Aveline’s DLC into Liberation HD because why the hell is it even in this game?

To fix ACUnity we can’t do much. After all bugs were fixed and all negative criticism was adressed with the patches, the game was quite playable. The story and protagonist are still boring but at least it works now. My best advice would be remove at least a quarter to a third of all NPCs, remove the clutter on the map, remove a few chests and zoom the chest icons with the map. That would greatly help. The Co-Op missions are great so those should stay but without all the forced online stuff in single player. Cut a few of the boring sidequests and you might even have a solid, albeit mediocre game here.

ACSyndicate is great and doesn’t really need changes, so that’s nice.

Now, while writing those articles I realized that I went more into an overal criticism direction and less into a game design and philosophy direction. On the other hand, I elaborated countless times what philosophy Ubisoft takes with the series so I think the description still stands.

Up to this point,Ubisoft didn’t care about the series one bit, it was just a product to be sold and customers to be milked. And while I doubt that this will change in the future, the delay of two years instead of one will probably do the series good, so here is hope they at least learned something from all that mess.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the read^^

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/06/08/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-5/feed/0ezekielrageThe symptoms of change in video games using Uncharted 4 as an examplehttps://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/the-symptoms-of-change-in-video-games-using-uncharted-4-as-an-example/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/the-symptoms-of-change-in-video-games-using-uncharted-4-as-an-example/#respondMon, 16 May 2016 09:19:46 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1192Continue reading →]]>Wow, what a long and overly complex title. This article must be amazing! Spoiler alert: It’s not, I’m just nitpicking again^^

So I recently enjoyed Uncharted 4 the way I enjoyed Golden Abyss: By watching other people play it on YouTube without commentary. I don’t have a PS4 and I won’t buy a PS4 and while I get that some people ought to rather play the game, I really, REALLY don’t want to. You see, I think the Uncharted gameplay is boring. Tomb Raider did it so much better. I played Uncharted 1-3 myself and while I loved the presentation I didn’t like the gameplay in those, so back then I decided to consume any sequels just as videos.

However, I LOVE the characters in Uncharted, the writing (despite the fact that 4 had a very boring story), the setups and the little details. It’s just that the gameplay is boring, predictable and wonky. Kinda like the story, characters and setups in Tomb Raider. Weird how that goes^^

Anyway, my overall thinking is that I like Uncharted but it would be so much better as a movie. But while watching Uncharted 4 I noticed something that has been bugging me a while now and I can finally make sense of it.

Is it just me or is music in the videogames industry taking a backseat while graphics evolve? I mean, the old Uncharted games looked great but had amazing soundtracks. Uncharted 4 looks amazing but the soundtrack is rather boring. Music in the Assassin’s Creed games have become boring while graphics evolved. Castlevania Lords of Shadow looks amazing but sounds dull. The list goes on. We push graphics but not music, and that has always been the case in games. But lately, I think, we realized that if we make music sound ochestral and epic we can get away with not really putting much effort into it. Back when we had very limited options we had to compose catchy tunes, now all we need is a choir and some bwahhs and boom, soundtrack.

That’s not to say that music nowadays is bad. As games like Undertale, Shovel Knight or Xenoblade Chronicles (not X) have proven, we still have it in us. I just feel like we give music less thought than visuals simply because it’s easier to market visuals. I also believe that is is a mistake, as people are willing to spend money on videogame concerts as well.

Look, I am not saying all music needs to be catchy tunes and great compositions. Of course not. I am just saying that we should not forget great music when we push the envelope for what we can do in videogames. That’s all.

Also Uncharted 4 has a boring story, good thing I don’t care for story in my videogames since I prefer gamepla— Awww crap.

Assassin’s Creed is a videogame series by publisher Ubisoft. The player takes the role of various assassins all throughout history and explores historical settings, meets real people from those locations and kills most of them. It is a very enjoyable series.

This is the fourth part of a multi part series I’ll do on the technical and designphilosophical parts of the first five games. I will close it with a final part talking about the rest of the series in broad strokes, as it is not needed to retreat already explored topics. Click here to read Part 3.

In 2014 and 2015, Ubisoft released 2 Assassin’s Creed games each year. I will talk about the secondary games here, Liberation HD; an HD port of the AC3 companion game for PS Vita, and Rogue, a spinoff of the series where you play a Templar for the first time.

I’d like to note that both Liberation HD and Rogue were not very well recieved because they were deemed inferior ripoffs of other games. The fact of the matter, however, is that both games are significantly better than the other games they were released with. Liberation HD harkens back to AC2 while Rogue is basically a sequel to AC4, but in good this time.

Liberation HD focuses on Aveline de Grandpre, our first female playable character. Setting is New Orleans and the surrounding Bayu but other locations are explored as well. While being relatively short and light on content, what’s there is very good and enjoyable.

Rogue is set between the prologue and the main game of AC3 and as such you’ll meet various characters from that game as well as new ones. It chronicles the downfall of the Assassin Brotherhood in America, something only hinted at in AC3. It, too, is a very short game, even shorter than Liberation HD but it has a lot more content than the former game.

The writing in both games is pretty solid, and both games were developed by the same small studio using mostly recyceled assets from previous games. As such it is no wonder that the games look and play remarkibly similar and have similar content to earlier titles. However there is one big diffrerence: The games are actually fun! While Liberation HD plays more like AC3 did with climbing on trees and more ground based missions, Rogue plays more like AC4 with the naval combat. But unlike AC4, Rogue is actually a great Assassin’s Creed game, with interesting missions, well thought out locations and much more user friendly design. Everything AC4 did wrong, Rogue does right and everything AC4 did right, Rogue does better. As a matter of fact I’d be surprised if anyone would think AC4 is better than Rogue if they played Rogue first.

As for Liberation, it doesn’t really resemble another AC game, yet it has a similar structure to AC2, which is great. The biggest drawback of this game is the lack of anything interesting to do once the story is over. But that’s why we have our fake reimagining, no?

To make AC Liberation HD a better game we don’t need much. Tweak a few of the missions that are awkward, add Aveline voiceover during loading screens instead of the text display, similar to Connor’s narration in AC3, make the city more lively by having people talk randomly and add in more sidequests since the people are awkwardly silent in this game. New Orleans is quite small so maybe we could make it bigger by making the locked off Forest area west of town accessable. Adding in a few more Assassination Contracts would surely help as well. The Bayu is quite well done but other than hunting crocodiles there is not much to do there as well. We could add in a few more sidequests there, too. The Aveline Mission from AC4 should be moved from that game to Liberation because, well, it IS an Aveline Mission, so it would make for a great post-game bonus.
We could also add in a new set of missions where Aveline has to use her detective sense to find hidden keys. We could add in a vault beneath New Orleans where you could acquire a new Assassin’s Armor that would also dub as Ladys dress: The Armor of Hope, an Assassin from AC Rogue. And we could do the same in the Bayu to find another Assassin Outfit that would also dub as Slave outfit, the clothes of Mary “James Kidd” Read from AC4. Tie everything together with a new sequence (more on that later) and you’d have an exceptionally well crafted game.

As for AC Rogue there is very little we’d need to change. My bigget gripe is that the game opens with Ezios Theme. So either make Shay a descendant of Ezio (that would explain the Eagle Vision) OR change that theme to the overall AC Theme debuted in AC Revelations and refined in AC3. Other than that, the game is fantastic, but I would add two more sequences, both set before the broken one but after the main story is over..

One would be set in the late 1760s and Shay would crossover with Aveline. This sequence would have him hunt her for information about the artifact he is looking for. This sequence would be set during the time before Aveline heads to Mexico and could tie over some empty plot points from Liberation HD as this would also be the new sequence in Liberation HD but from Avelines point of view. In this sequence I would have Aveline retrieve a key from Shay, the first to enter Hope’s tomb. This way both games would be tied together perfectly.

The second new sequence would be set during AC3 and Shay would go after Connor. It would involve Shay trying to find and kill Achilles with Connor defendng him, similar to a scene early in AC3 where connor defends Achilles from some raiders. It could further the relationship between Shay and Achilles as well as Achilles and Connor and of course there would be a companion sequence to that in AC3, which I talked about last time

And just like that, we would have another set of brilliant games. Unfortunately Ubisoft is not known of listening to me so all those things will probably never happen. But one can dream.

Come back later for our final part of this where I discuss the remaining games and the future of the series in broad strokes.

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/05/06/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-4/feed/0ezekielrageSecret Wars – Comic Book Genocide: Reviewhttps://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/secret-wars-comic-book-genocide-review/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/secret-wars-comic-book-genocide-review/#commentsTue, 19 Apr 2016 17:22:13 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1119Continue reading →]]>As a writer I daresay I have at least somewhat of an idea what storytelling means. I hope I can differentiate good stories from bad stories, good ideas from bad ones. So believe me when I tell you that Secret Wars is one of the worst pieces of storytelling ever, filled with bad ideas and stupid decisions.

The blame lies not with the individual writers, however. The blame lies with editorial. I refuse to believe that one day a group of writers went to the editorial staff and proposed this event. It has all the hallmarks of a higher up decision, probably on a corporate level.

Allow me to explain: Marvel CEO Ike Perlmutter is a whiny crybaby, cheap bastard and overall petty human being. Rumor has it he is so angry at FOX for not returning the X-Men movie rights that he informed the Marvel Comics editorial to cut down on X-Men and Fantastic Four material as much as possible.

Whether this rumor is true or not does not matter to me. What matters is that there is no F4 book out right now and the X-Men are being decimated, with their ultimate death already teased in the upcoming Death of X event. Instead, Marvel is pushing the Inhmans greatly because they are similar enough to explore similar themes but they are owned by Marvel and not FOX. And wouldn’t you know, it is the Inhmans’ fault that the X-Men are dying: The Inhumans have something called Terriginesis which changes them from human to inhuman and a while ago, worldwide Terriginesis happened due to a cloud of mist. And Mutants from the X-Men comics are allergic to that cloud, resulting in injury and death.

Secret Wars is another stepping stone in taking down everything that made the Marvel Universe great. It serves one purpose, and one alone: Genocide. The entire Ultimate Universe, with the sole exception of Miles Morales and his friends has been destroyed, seven billion people dead and the Fantastic Four disbanded, all under the banner of shaking the Marvel Universe to its core. If killing somebody to further alter another character is called fridging, how do we call this, then?

Individual Secret Wars comics are not badly written. Most writers over at Marvel are very great, very talented people who know their stuff. But as a whole, the entire concept is bad comics. It only served the purpose of marketing, selling merchandise and variant covers and of course phazing out shit big Ike doesn’t like. If you skip Secret Wars alltogether and just read the comics before and after it, you will literally continue without a hitch, without any information missing and without a problem – Daredevil being one of the very few exceptions but that’s more due to a jump forward in time and not due to Secret Wars.

In the end, the entire event amounted to nothing. Absolutely nothing. This entire sentence, I think, sums up Marvel’s biggest problem at the moment, really. It’s like nothing they do matters anymore.

Bottom line: If you want your Marvel fix, go watch their films and TV/Netflix Shows since those are actually very good. Their comics? I used to read 15, now I read 3. I used to love Spider-Man, now I long for Spider-Man 2099 to return to his time and not interact with anyone in the Marvel Universe anymore since those people are no longer the people I knew and fell in love with.

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/04/19/secret-wars-comic-book-genocide-review/feed/1ezekielrageAssassin’s Creed – The Desmond Collection, Part 3https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-3/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-3/#respondMon, 04 Apr 2016 08:38:07 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1041Continue reading →]]>Assassin’s Creed is a videogame series by publisher Ubisoft. The player takes the role of various assassins all throughout history and explores historical settings, meets real people from those locations and kills most of them. It is a very enjoyable series.

This is the third part of a multi part series I’ll do on the technical and designphilosophical parts of the first five games. I will close it with a final part talking about the rest of the series in broad strokes, as it is not needed to retreat already explored topics. Click here to read Part 2.Assassin’s Creed III was released in 2012 to much hype. It was the fifth part in the franchise, although it was actually the 8th game in the whole series and if you count the PSVita game Liberation, which was part of this marketing cycle it was actually the ninth game in the franchise.

If that is confusing to you don’t worry, you are not the only one. With all the numbers and subtitles, it’s no wonder nobody can keep track. The game was a huge commercial succes and while critics praised it, gamers were less than enthusiastic. The fact that the game is buggy to this day, after six patches I might add, did part in this, as did the lackluster writing, the stupid ending to Desmond’s story, the main protagonist Connor, who was so different from Ezio it felt quite jarring alongside the fact that we basically got an unfinished game they had to finish with addon content and DLC. The PSVita game did not fare much better, and I will keep talking about that one to a minimum because despite being marketed as sidestory to ACIII there is very little overlap – Aveline is not even related to Desmond to begin with.

ACIII did as many things right as wrong, however after all the patches were applied the good outweighs the bad a lot, really. Most issues stem from the fact that the series gained so much momentum, Ubisoft didn’t want to end it as originally planned, so they changed the entire writing. This caused problems with production and instead of delaying the game, they just shipped it in an unfinished state. If that sounds familiar, it’s probably because Ubisoft has been doing exactly that for years now. I can’t even remember when they actually shipped a finished, bugfree game that didn’t need patches to work properly. And if you say ACSyndicate or FarCry Primal, need I remind you that the current version number of those games is 1.4 and we started out with 1.0? I guess not…

Now, the moment to moment gameplay in ACIII as been greatly overhauled. Traversal is much better now, with Connor being able to climb rocks and trees. Combat is also greatly improved, with combos and counter kills and some nice new animations. Connor is a brutal and violent powerhouse, without the elegance of Ezio or the slow movements of Altair. It is very easy to dispatch hordes of enemies by just jumping in and mashing the counter button until everyone is gone. While some say this ruined the already fickle combat even further, I think it was a wonderful change and one that fits well with the character. The problem is that they made that battle system even simpler and easier in subsequent games, but that’s of no issue to this one. In ACIII the combat works for the game we got and is very enjoyable.

ACIII also introduced us to sailing missions and they do a lot to make the game much more enjoyable. While sailing is not as refined as in later iterations, it is still well made and used just sparingly enough to be a nice change of pace. It also helps that sailing looks great and allows for more customisation.

Gone are the recruitable assassins and the bank. Instead we have a set of six pre-defined assassin recruits you meet during the story and a crafting system for trade. While the crafting system is incredibly bad and one of the worst aspects of the game, the recruits are better than ever. Because the game no longer features prostitutes for stealth or mercenaries for battle, those roles have been given your recruits. You can send them out to assassinate a target, use them as bodyguards, use them in disguise to infiltrate a location or just as overall muscle. The system is well executed and expertly made and I am very sad to see that this is also the last game where we have recruits to begin with.

Modern day segments also return, this time more important than ever since they finally finish Desmonds story, albeit in a shitty way. While I personally like the character and his missions, the entire plot is hamfisted and it is quite clear that this is not the way the orginal writer intended it to end. The ending, which I won’t spoil, is even worse because it opens up a new plotpoint that does never get resolved in any subsequent games, instead they are basically treading water. This was done because so many complained that the modern day segments suck. That’s the reason they scaled them back drastically in newer games, much to my dismay since I actually liked them.

Connor’s story isnt much better, really. The first three sequences you play as somebody else entirely and while the characterisations are great and very well made, it takes half the game until you actually put on your assassin’s outfit and become a proper assassin. The problem with that is that all the time you are not an assassin is just used as overly prolonged tutorial that just never stops. This drags the first half of the game quite a bit, so much even that the second half feels rushed. It’s also quite clear that those things are rushed since instead of actually experiencing the story, Connor narrates it in during the loading screens because there simply isn’t enough time.

Again, like the last few games before this (and almost all afterwards) this game was released unfinished and it clearly shows. While the map is fully accessable this time (unlike the last three games) it is quite clear that huge chunks of the story are missing. Ubisoft’s “good enough” attitude greatly harms this series and this is a shame, considering back then they actually had some inventive things going on.

Despite all that it is a great game, though. Once the technical mess was fixed and some missing depth was given to the protagonist in the addon content and the alternative reality DLC (which was horribly overpriced but well made) the game has much to offer, even if some things *cough Crafting cough* are still pretty bad. But that’s something not even our hypothetical remaster can fix 100% – but I’ll sure as hell will try.

Once again we use the latest technology from the game Rogue. ACIII is pretty as is, so we won’t see much improvement besides lighting, shadows and framerate but that’s good enough for me since, as said, it already looks quite nice.

Of course our remaster launches with all DLC, maybe a bit better integrated into the main game, especially after the story is done. The DLC is episodic but we could string it together to a full set without the episodes and integrate it into the map like they did with the pivots at the end. That would not only give us the ability to travel between locations easily, it would also open us up for more meaningful sidequests. Overall, I think the episodic release was a mistake and since we haven’t seen it again, Ubisoft might agree.

As for main content, I’d cut a few missions with our first protagonist short. The entire first mission is just walk there, watch cutscene, go back to your room. You repeat that four times and all of that can easily be condensed to a single mission were you actually do something. That would shorten the intro quite a bit. I fact we can cut down the entire first three sequences into one sequence, if we just focus on what is good and throw out the unneccesary filler. Of course that means our game is now much shorter but we’ll get to that. So we have the Opera house as is, the entire ship trip is shortened drastically, the entire thing in Boston is shortened down as well, cutting the entire first three sequences down to one.

So in our new game we would meet Connor in Sequence two and we would combine his first two sequences into one, again cutting out the filler and ensuring that you’ll get the assassins outfit sooner. Since most tutorials are either redundant or too long, we can lose qutie a bit there. This way we can move the story along at a smooth pace, cut out all redundant filler and have two solid and enjyable first sequences, both of which serve as a tutorial much more competent than what we got. The problem is that our game is now only half as long as it used to be, which is a big problem, especially if we come right from our previous remaster which was just enormously huge. But there is a way to fix that.

You see, the game is quite linear and it doesn’t allow you to enter certain regions before your time. We would get rid of that and open the game up as soon as we reach Sequence 3, allowing for tons of sidecontent being accessed, making the game much more fun. So basically as soon as you have access to your ship, you can go everywhere, doing all the sidequests. Some of this side content is optional stuff but it is still part of the story, like the Biddle ship sequences or the West Point stuff. While I would keep the Biddle missions optional, I would integrate the West Point Missions into their respective place in the timeline. They are not very spectacular but that can be changed for the better by slightly re-writing them. To make the later half even more interesting, we include the single Connor mission from the PSVita game. In the Vita game, the heroine travels to New York and meets with Connor to find a character and if you connect the two games, you can play the mission with connor from his perspective. That mission is actually quite entertaining and would fit well with the main story. Sure, our game is still much shorter than it used to be but at least most things we do now is quite entertaining. But we are not done yet.

ACIII is the last game that includes Assassin Tombs – even though they are not literally tombs, the gameplay is still the same. They are accessed with your ship once you collected enough trinkets for an old guy. Now I think instead of just walking to a chest and getting the trinket, we could tie them to assassination missions, seeng how the game only has 15 of those. We add more of those contracts and, in addition to that, tie the trinkets to the contracts as well. That doesn’t really prolong the main story but it makes the game so much better since there is actually quite little assassination in this Assassin’s Creed game. Furthermore, there is an entire sequence with story content I’d add into the game and it would basically be set up as a multi-assassination mission, similar to the Savonarola kills in ACII. I would put that mission in shortly before the end, to justify the sudden information dump Connor gets when he needs to kill the Templar Master.

The game’s money system is also very badly set up, so I would change the crafting system to something much smoother and enjoyable, crafting certain items on the fly and setting up a bigger reason to craft things. That could (but not neccesarily) include crafting materials for various optional storyquests. For example crafting the explosvive barrels they use to break open a wall. As an optional mission constraint it works since it is not needed to complete the mission in regular mode.

I would also bring in some missing memories like we did in ACII with the Christina missions. Since Connor didn’t really get another game we could focus those on things we cut – bringing back the removed missions from the first half of the game. Since those are optional, it is at everyone’s leisure to play them without distracting from the main story.

The biggest change, however, would be the ending. I would change the final scene to remove the discussion with Minerva and Juno and I would cut the final scene with Juno. This plot point was never taken up again and could easily be cut. It would bring the trilogy to a nice close and not waste anybodys time with more Juno shenanigans. Instead I would just have Desmond walk up to the pedestal, see what happens if he doesn’t activate it and then he activates it. It changes nothing in the grand scheme of things but makes for a much more satisfying conclusion.

If we combine all those things with minor tweaks and changes, we could end up with a game that is much shorter but so much more enjoyable. ACIII is a solid game, hindered again by a short development cycle and everything we can do to fix that would be welcome.

As for the Liberation sidegame, I will focus on that in my next article alongside ACRogue, followed by a final article covering the rest of the series.

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https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/04/04/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-3/feed/0ezekielrageDeadpool – Movie Reviewhttps://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/deadpool-movie-review/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/deadpool-movie-review/#respondFri, 18 Mar 2016 11:39:19 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=1007Continue reading →]]>I know I am MUCH too late with this and I apologize. I am rather busy these days but I do have a few things to say about this film. So here it goes.

I liked the film. It will find its way into my bluray shelf as soon as it is available. That being said, there are a few things I have to talk about.

First, I do like me some Morena Baccarin, especially in the nude. I just find it odd that she survived the finale. As a writer, hobby film-maker and comic lover, I would have killed her to not only give the actions of the film more gravitas but also to open the way for Domino and of course more Deadpool insanity. His sanity was questionable in the film but not downright loony and his woman’s death would have really pushed him over the edge. Also it’s pure bullshit she survived from a physics point of view and YES I KNOW it’s Deadpool, but still.

Also, while the central car chase was great in the film, the fact that pretty much everything of it was already spoiled in the trailer is shit. Pardon my german but I really hate it if movie studios show everything in the trailer. That’s why I was so glad we only got three seconds of Spider-Man, ten seconds of Black Panther and NO seconds of Baron Zemo in the Civil War trailers. We know very little about the film and that is GOOD. So please, studios, don’t spoil your movies in the trailers. I get your thinking, you want the people excited and not confused but at least a third of us are not complete idiots so we get it anyway and the other two thirds, who are complete morons won’t get it no matter what so don’t bother.

As for the rest, as said, I really liked the film. The humor, the writing, the style, it was spot on and I hope we see more movies taking a risk. But I guess Hollywood will learn all the wrong lessons from this film so I expect to see dozens of “edgy” R rated films released in the future. But that is NOT what we should learn from Deadpool. It is a film that is creative, takes risks and stays true to what it is. THAT is what we sould learn. Not that dick jokes are funny.

Also, I don’t get why people still take their kids to this film. Just don’t, you are a shitty parent, the R rating exists for a reason.

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/03/18/deadpool-movie-review/feed/0ezekielrageAssassin’s Creed – The Desmond Collection, Part 2https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-2/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-2/#respondTue, 08 Mar 2016 12:53:57 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=947Continue reading →]]>Assassin’s Creed is a videogame series by publisher Ubisoft. The player takes the role of various assassins all throughout history and explores historical settings, meets real people from those locations and kills most of them. It is a very enjoyable series.

This is the second part of a multi part series I’ll do on the technical and designphilosophical parts of the first five games. I will close it with a final part talking about the rest of the series in broad strokes, as it is not needed to retreat already explored topics. Click here to read Part 1.Assassin’s Creed II was released in 2009 and fixed most problems the predecessors had. The game was incredibly well written, with a great setting and charming characters. To this day, most people would agree that this title was one of the best, if not the best Assassin’s Creed games and it’s pretty clear why. Good writing, solid gameplay and a great mission structure – in short, the game just works.

One year later a sequel was released named Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood. It improved greatly on the second game and added some nice features. But on the other hand it signaled the downfall of the entire franchise.

2011 saw the release of Assassin’s Creed Revelations, the last of the games starring Ezio, the hero from part 2 and also the last to actually make even something of a positive impact, despite being much less well recieved than its predecessors. And the reasons are quite clear.

Brotherhood was originally part of Assassin’s Creed II but had to be cut due to time constraints. So they planned to release it as DLC. But then ACII had to be rushed to release on time in 2009 and even more content was cut. Instead of bringing in Brotherhood as DLC it was moved to be a new game and instead parts of the main storyline of ACII were released as DLC. You can see where this is going…

ACII had a lot of things going for it, but being a complete game is not one of those things. The first release was missing two sequences and even after all DLC was released it was quite clear that the game was rushed. There is an entire district in Venice that is inaccessable and an entire map that is only used for one short sequence. It is very obvious that both Venice and the Mountains had additional locations but were cut due to time constraints. The developers didn’t even manage to include additional bonus stuff into those missing maps. Sure the mountains have chests but that’s it.

ACII introduced assassination contracts, where you could recieve a contract to kill a specific NPC under specific constraints for money. What stopped the develoeprs to put such contracts into the mountains or the missing Venice district? Again, time constraints, because the game had a launch date and delay was NOT an option, the biggest problem Ubisoft has, really.

The thing is, this rush really shows in the game. The first half is just amazingly brilliant. I would go as far as saying that the first half of ACII is one of the best pieces of gaming ever created – it is THAT good! But as soon as you hit venice the game starts dragging. Missions start to repeat and a lot of gameplay is doing the same thing over and over again. I assume the developers did this to lengthen the game when they found out that they wouldn’t get the time to put everything in they wanted – a thing a lot of devs do in those circumstances and I just can’t help but thinking the game would have been even better if the devs were given the opportunity to stick to their vision rather than rush the game out of the door.

Brotherhood felt a bit more complete, if only because it was a complete copy of ACII. It had the same tech, resused models and maps and it showed. It was supposed to be a DLC after all but it was pushed to be a full game instead. The result is a game that has some great moments and ideas but is SEVERLY lacking in the story department – Ezio’s quest to rid rome of Cesare Borgia is quite boring and short, because the devlopers had to strech out a 3 hour story to fill a full game. Even worse, after the game was released as full game instead of DLC it became quite clear that it, again, is incomplete. There is a section in the vatican district of Rome that can’t be accessed and even worse that section contains a gate landmark, making it impossible to visit all locations in your logbook.

Revelations is even worse. It broght only two new things to the table and both are mediocre at best. The new hookblade is nice for traversal but that’s bout it already and the den defense is generally despised. And then there is that fact that again, an entire district in Istanbul can not be accessed but clearly be seen, because once again Ubisoft decided to ship the game incomplete rather than delay, which resulted in the game needing numerous bugfix patches to even be enjoyable.

Also, the DS saw the last outing of a spinoff for quite some time in ACII Discovery, a story set during ACII where we get to meet Columbus and travel to spain. It was an okay game, gameplay wise but it was completely useless as a story.

On a positive note, these games are also where the Desmond parts, the parts set in the here and now are at their peak. Desmond is not liked by many but I found him and his missions quite enjoyable, especially in Brotherhood. They were well written and actually went somewhere interestig.

Last time I started a hypothetical remaster of the series and I want to continue that now. Once again we use the graphics engine from the newer games like Rogue for this and the newest incarnation of all models and assets that we can. As soon as we apply this to ACII we have an amazing game. But again we go a step further.

Let’s bring in Brotherhood as additional chapter to ACII like it was originally planned. All the features of Brotherhood are brought in as well, which means a crossbow and Assassin Recruits as well as Borgia towers. This changs the moment to moment gameplay in ACII quite a bit but we can make it work.

Now, ACII became a bit slow in the second half, since everything you did in Venice was just a retreat if things you did previously. So we’ll cut out some missions in Venice where you just free theives or mercenaries again and again. Also the entire mission to obtain a golden mask is fun but ultimately pointless so we could put that in as OPTIONAL objectives, something we’ll do more of, and minigames that are repeatable to give the player something to do in the post game.

The whole Savonarola thing may be historically accurate but completely pointless so I’d actually cut that and put those missions in as optional missions you can tackle at certain times, similar to the Christina missions in brotherhood and the Da Vinci Disappearance. I’d also put some of the nine targets into the Toscana region – it may not be historically accurate but much better gameplay.

The flying machine from ACII makes a return in Brotherhood and it is equally bothersome, so we cut that a bit shorter by speeding the machine up a bit. We don’t bring in Borgia towers or Assassin Recruits before we reach rome and after that they are unlocked throught Italy, giving the post game more oomph. Same goes for the crossbow. We make the cut parts from Venice and the mountains accessable and add in assassination contracts, treasures and assassin recruits.

Now in Brotherhood, everything in the middle of the game is more or less pointless filler so we cut that shorter as well. The ideal solution is that we have three equally long parts in Toscana, Venice and Rome with each area having some optional missions: Savonarola in Toscana, Carneval Sports in Venice and the cut parts from Brotherhood in Rome. We can also space out the Christina missions from Brotherhood throught the entire game and weave the Da Vinci disappearance DLC and Copernico DLC better into the game This would make ACII an enormously huge game, probably the biggest of the entire franchise but that’s okay since, well ACII and Brotherhood are the best games in the series anyway.

As for Revelations, I’d add that as DLC for our new ACII as it really is completely optional. We make the whole city accessable, giving the hookblade more use. We cut the Den defense and instead add in lost memories, similar to Christina, but these lost memories are split between Ezio in Spain from Discovery and Altair’s story from the first DS game. We cut the main story slightly shorter because the middle part is filler and add in the missing things from the first and second games, things we didn’t fit in those.

It would take a lot of work to achieve this, probably mroe than anything else I am proposing but if this were to happen you can be sure that everyone would agree that this was not only the best AC game, but also one of the best games ever.

Next up: Assassin’s Creed III

]]>https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/03/08/assassins-creed-the-desmond-collection-part-2/feed/0ezekielrageGods of Egypt – Movie Reviewhttps://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/gods-of-egypt-movie-review/
https://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/gods-of-egypt-movie-review/#respondMon, 29 Feb 2016 20:00:15 +0000http://ezekielrage.wordpress.com/?p=976Continue reading →]]>So by now everything has been said about this movie that could be said I suppose. People complain about whitewashing and how much the film sucks but frankly, I disagree. I actually liked the film for what it was^^

Our story is set in fantasy egypt. Nothing about this film is even closely resembling real Egypt. Think of it as a fantasy movie where the entire world just happens to be called Egypt. This world is a flat one and egypt is the only thing on it. I think that the meetings for this film were quite simple:

What if all the old egyptian tales were true, down to the last silly idea?

So we get a flat world called Egypt that is split into three parts: Pretty cozy, burning desert and underworld – the later being below the other two and inaccessable by humans. Osiris rules over all of Egypt and his brother Set takes care of the desert. And when it is time to crown a new king, Set takes control by killing his brother and banishing the rightful heir by stealing his eyes. Simple enough.

As you can guess, the entire movie is a romp from setpiece to setpiece to achieve the goals of whoever is in the current party. Much like a videogame a lot of critics say, but those critics are VERY bad at their job. The movie reminds me of Terry Gilliams Baron Münchhausen or the underappreciated Krull. Parallels to the old Harryhausen films can be made, like Jason and the Argonauts for example. It is a journey in itself while the overall plot takes a backseat to setpieces and visuals and that is something modern audiences may not appreciate.

The acting is solid enough. Everybody has some kind of british accent which is standard for modern fantasy I guess. The movie is pretty much a CGI fest and it shows, with some scenes looking wonky while others looking very good. This also translates to pacing, where everything is cut fast and short just to get on with it. The fight scenes are mostly made up of twirling around the characters and some talking – nothing new or fancy here, really. Overall it looks okay but I can’t shake the feeling that the film could have used more time in the oven to flesh out the CGI more and cut it differently. The film has many of the same problems Thor – The Dark World had in that regard. It needs more fat and despite a running time of over two hours it feels as if the film is about ten to fifteen minutes too short.

As for the “controversial” things the internet claims, this is a fantasy film. It is neither set in the real world nor is it even set in anything resembling our universe. As such I find it hard to fault the film for this, considering it’s entirely fictional. My best guess is that detractors simply haven’t seen the movie^^

Overall I liked the film. I am not a big fantasy buff but it was a nice two hour romp. If you like films like the aforementioned Münchhausen or Krull, you’ll probably like this^^